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December 11, 2000RUSS Data, as of 12/7/2000:

Lake

# profiles

# data points *

first profile

last profile

Ice Lake

2906

196,293

1/28/98

11/09/00

Grindstone Lake

838

90,396

8/06/99

10/18/00

Lake Independence

1360

89,474

4/06/98

9/18/00

West Upper Lk Mtka

1116

112,439

4/13/99

11/13/00

Halsteds Bay Lk Mtka

1432

66,881

3/03/99

11/09/00

( * Temp, pH, EC, DO, DOSat, and Turbidity )

November 30, 2000The WOW home page has a new look. We've added two features that
showcase our data visualization tools to first time visitors.

November 28, 2000Water-on-the-Web was featured in Science (10 Nov 2000 vol
290 issue 5494)! The Science NetWatch Education section (edited
by Jocelyn Kaiser) said the following about WOW:

"Earth-gouging glaciers retreating northward at the end
of the last ice age blessed Minnesota with its 12,000 lakes.
Several of those lakes now form the centerpiece of Water on the
Web, a site
for teaching high school and first-year college students science
and math concepts through lessons on limnology, or the study
of lakes, rivers, and streams.

A 21-page primer covers topics such as lake formation, food webs,
and eutrophication (nutrient overload). It also explains such
basics as the seasonal turnover
of lake waters and a device, called the Secchi disk, used to measure water
clarity. After boning up, students can download and analyze spreadsheets
of near-real-time data collected from stations floating in four
lakes and the
St. Louis River. There are also a glossary, interactive Geographic Information
Systems maps, and a good set of lake ecology links."

November 10, 2000

Winter has arrived in Minnesota and although the lakes haven't
frozen over yet we have pulled the RUSS units off. Keep checking
back for news about winter deployment.

Water-on-the-Web and Lake Access have won the 2000
Technical Excellence Award for public education and research,
from the North American Lake Management Society, in recognition
of extending effective and creative education in lake restoration,
protection, and management. Rich Axler and Chris Owen were in
Miami to receive the award.

November 2, 2000
It's finally happened -- there's too much RUSS data. Some browsers
(Netscape in particular) will run out of memory if you direct the
DVT applet to read the data for all of the lakes. So, until our
new (more efficient & feature-filled) version of the DVTools is
available, we suggest that you only load data from a subset of
the available lakes.

October 30 , 2000The Grindstone had to be removed entirely from the lake due to
vandalism. All three anchor lines had been cut and the unit was
found along the Audubon Center's shoreline. No equipment was lost
but the cable will need some repair.

October 26 , 2000The Grindstone and Independence units are off-line. Ice Lake and
the two Minnetonka units are working.

October 12 , 2000The National Atmospheric
Deposition Program (NADP) has a web site where precipitation
data can be found along with data on atmospheric deposition of
a number of things including nitrogen, chloride, and sulfate.
There are two stations very near RUSS sites; MN16 is
near Ice Lake and MN28 is
about 1/4 mile from Grindstone Lake.

October 11 , 2000WOW's sister project, Lake Access: Making Water Quality Data Real
and Relevant for Minnesotans, has a new easy to remember URL- http://lakeaccess.org/.
Lake Access focuses on the water quality of Twin Cities' lakes
(that's Minneapolis/St Paul, MN to those of you not from these
parts).

We've added a new section to the WOW site where you can see some
images of the lakes, get limnology updates, and see what some of
the WOW staff actually look like. Go to Notes.

A new way to look at ppm, ppb, and ppt can be found at Units And
if you're wondering what the heck a hectare is go to Conversions.

September 25, 2000A new organization entitled LakeNet with a website (http://www.worldlakes.org)
has been recently advertised to the lakes community. We cannot
attest to its quality or political purpose but a quick scan of
the website shows it has some useful information and links and
includes a list-server.

September 22, 2000Grindstone, Ice, Halsteds, and West Upper are on-line. However,
the Independence unit has decided to take a nap. We hope to be
able to wake it up soon.

September 18, 2000All but the Grindstone unit are alive and well. We're working
to get a new, borrowed sonde on to the Grindstone unit this week.

What is dihydrogen monoxide and is it dangerous? Some think so, go to Water
Facts

September 11, 2000Both the Grindstone and Ice Lake units are not functioning as
they should. Justin Watkins (ISWCD) will take a look at the Ice
Lake unit today and we'll get down to Grindstone again this Friday.
In the meantime there'll be no profile data reported for either
lake.

August 29, 2000The Grindstone Lake profiler seems to be stuck at 1.5 m so will
not be reporting until we can get down there and check it out.
We hope to have it back on line by this Thursday (8/31).

August 24, 2000We will need to cut back on the number of profiles the West Upper
unit is collecting to allow the battery to recharge. We normally
get four profiles every 24 hours. For the next few days we'll only
collect a 6am and 6pm profile. This should provide less of a power
drain on the battery and allow the solar panels to catch up and
bring the battery back to a full 12 volts.

August 14, 2000The Grindstone Lake RUSS unit is back in service, and has been
gathering data since August 9.

August 7 , 2000The Lakes Independence, Minnetonka, and Ice Lake units are all
up and running except pH on both Ice and West Upper are not being
reported due to some probe problems. The Grindstone unit will be
put back together this Wednesday (8/9) and if all goes well we'll
have data to report the following day.

July 5, 2000The Ice Lake, Lake Independence and Lake Minnetonka RUSSs are
all on-line. The Grindstone unit has had some cable problems and
has not been up since mid-June. The St Louis system ran for a while
until the sonde took a beating in the Duluth ship canal.

June 5, 2000Well, most of the lake RUSS units are up and running just fine.
The Grindstone unit is having a problem communicating but still
seems to be collecting data. Also, the pH probe on that unit is
no longer working.

We are collecting data at the Duluth lift bridge now ! We are
working on a way to present those data so check back for updates.

May 8, 2000All of the lake RUSS units are up and running.

May 1, 2000The Ice Lake RUSS is now up and running. We have several manual
profiles that were taken since ice-off and they show that the lake
turned over this spring. The lake did not mix in either the spring
of 1998 or 1999.

April 19, 2000FYI -- the current contents of the online RUSS profile
database:

Lake

# of Profiles

# of Data Points *

Ice Lake

1997

128,787

Lake Independence

827

54,694

Grindstone Lake

521

65,615

Halsteds Bay, Mtka

712

35,759

West Upper Lake, Mtka

514

56,962

( * Temp, pH, EC, DO, DOSat, and Turbidity
)

April 4, 2000All of the WOW lakes are now ice free. Ice Lake went out 3/30
and Grindstone 3/31. We will be working this week and next to get
RUSS back out on these two lakes. We are also closer to having
a unit in the St. Louis River near the Duluth lift bridge.

March 27, 2000The Halsteds Bay, West Upper Lake, and Independence RUSSs are
now back on the ice free waters of the Twin Cities Metro Lakes.
Take a look at the new data. The ice out watch continues for Ice
and Grindstone Lakes.

March 18, 2000Ice-off Minnetonka. This is the second earliest ice-off in 123
years! The earliest ice-out was March 11, 1878. Independence ice
was gone 3/11/00.

March 17, 2000Water, Webs & Widgets Teacher Workshop. High school and
college science teachers are invited to spend June 12-16, 2000,
in Minnesota handling cutting-edge technology for monitoring lakes
and rivers. After attending, you'll be better equipped to help
today's students apply basic science concepts to real-world problems.
Cost: $50.

March 9, 2000We have started an electronic newsletter to keep interested users
informed of major changes we make to this website. It will also
contain the details of any changes made to previously published
RUSS data after it has undergone QA/QC review. To subscribe just tell
us your e-mail address.

March 7, 2000An animated tutorial: Using
WOW Data with Excel is now available. It demonstrates how
to create graphs using the weekly RUSS data spreadsheets (requires
Flash plug-in).

February 28, 2000Has spring really sprung? We're not sure but the warm weather
and rain have made ice conditions iffy, particularly near the Twin
Cities. The Independence and Minnetonka units were removed 2/25
and the Ice Lake unit is coming off today. If winter comes back
we'll try to continue bringing you periodic manual profiles from
each of the lakes.

February 7, 2000A number of difficulties, including vandalism
at the Lake Independence station, have led to intermittent data
streams from the WOW lakes.
Manual profiles have been posted (see "other
data"). The systems are not very dynamic under the ice
relative to the ice-free season, so there is little loss of information.
Thanks to Brian Vlach (Hennepin Parks), Justin Watkins (Itasca
Soil and Water Conservation District), and the NRRI staff for their
persistence on some extremely cold days.

January 25, 2000
A user in Germany recently called to our attention an error in
the teacher's conductivity lesson
plan. A note there
stated that differences in EC within a lake's profile are driven
primarily by temperature. Temperature is important in conductivity
but you won't be able to see that in the RUSS data. All RUSS and
manual data here are reported as temperature compensated values.
The WOW EC values represent the conductivity of that zone of water
had it been measured at 25 C. This allows users to make easy comparisons
between the EC values throughout the water column.

January 20, 2000Lakes Independence and Minnetonka's Halsteds
Bay RUSSs are working and data are posted.

January 13, 2000The Lakes Independence and Minnetonka RUSSs are going out on to
the ice today. Look for a progress update here shortly.

Ice Lake RUSS data should be available by the week of 1/17/00.

Recent Web page updates include: Updated ancillary
data for all of the lakes and Grindstone Lake morphometry and
oxygen and heat budgets.

January 3, 2000The mild winter we're having has delayed
ice-on and our winter deployments although all of the lakes are
now, finally,
ice covered. Ice Lake iced over in early December and Grindstone
on 12/21/99. Independence and Minnetonka are also ice covered but
recent warm weather has made us decide to wait a little bit longer
before venturing out on to the Twin Cities lakes.